Newya: Ouya doubles storage, improves controller, raises price

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At this point in the Ouya’s life, most people have moved on from the initial feelings of outrage that the hardware induced, to sympathy for a company that seemed like they really were trying to revolutionize gaming. Facing embarrassingly poor reviews and a generally negative reception by the gaming public, the company never made an attempt to get Ouya consoles into homes, such as with the tried-and-true tradition of a price drop. Now, the folks over at Ouya are actually doing the opposite, and releasing a new, more expensive model that doesn’t revise what makes the Ouya a tough sell.

In an effort to capitalize on the limited holiday edition of the Ouya, the biggest change to the new console is that it has doubled in storage capacity. It has only doubled from 8GB to 16GB — a capacity that’s too small for a smartphone if you’re into the mobile gaming scene and also store a moderate amount of music. However, that’s not too big of a deal considering the console only runs a limited (relative to the entire Play Store, at least) library of Android games.

One of the biggest problems with the Ouya was the uncomfortable, laggy controller. Simultaneously hilarious and depressing, a prominent “hack” to make the controller less laggy was to literally tip the Ouya on its side, facing the top part of box toward your controller. This actually improved the controller’s responsiveness — and considering the Ouya’s vent is on the bottom for some reason, also improved cooling. The new model claims to introduce an improved controller with “better functionality” and improved Bluetooth for a faster response, but we’re not entirely sure what that better functionality details.

The Newya and its controller also get a black matte makeover, and boosted WiFi connectivity that aims to solve another of the console’s more prominent issues.

The new model jumps in price to $129.99, while the original Ouya is still available for $99.99. It would’ve been nice if the company upgraded the hardware to match modern-day power — it’s still using a Tegra 3 and 1GB of RAM instead of a Tegra 4 and some larger amount of RAM. The Tegra K1 is just over the horizon, so the Ouya could be waiting to make that upgrade, which would be preferred over the Tegra 4. While the Newya’s slight upgrade is nice, it’s confusing as to why Ouya didn’t just make this new model the standard Ouya for the normal $99.99 price, and abandon the original 8GB model. An extra 8GB of storage capacity won’t set the gaming world on fire, but at least its nice that the folks at Ouya are still trying. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the Ouya is that it’s an Android gaming console — a genre of gaming that hasn’t exactly taken off.